In an interview with Ellen Degeneres, Minaj stated that she doesn't want to call her relationship with Meek Mill a "relationship."

“You know, I don’t know," she told Ellen. "We’re still figuring each other out. And in fact, I don’t even want to say that I’m in a relationship anymore, because I think when people hear that, they go to like the mean place.

“You know, I used to be secretive," she continued. "You guys asked me about that before on my pre-interview. I used to say, ‘I’m not in a relationship,’ even though I was in a 12-year relationship. Now I feel like just going back to that and saying, ‘You know what? I’m single.”

The topic arose after Ellen asked Minaj about her "engagement ring" and showed an image of it on the screen. “That’s not my engagement ring though," Minaj responded, "[Meek] said that that’s my second ring and that if I get a third ring that that would be the engagement ring,”

Minaj contextualized her view on relationship labels by telling a story of what happened when she didn't post her Valentine's Day gift to Instagram.

“People said, ‘They’re not together.’ We were getting anonymous messages saying, ‘Yeah, she wasn’t with him [Meek] and she was crying all day.’ Just putting up all these things. Meanwhile, we were really in bed all day on Valentine’s Day. Like, seriously! We were in bed all day and then I got up and opened these three amazing gifts, and then I went back to bed. Then I read this story that we weren’t together on Valentine’s Day and it just made me realize that no matter how great your life is, you can’t even impress people. You just have to do you and make yourself happy and forget about trying to get everyone’s approval. It’s better just to keep those things sacred. So, now, I don’t really care to say ‘I’m in a relationship’ or ‘I’m engaged’ or whatever. There’s a boy that likes me. That’s all.

“[Meek] and I are just two souls right now passing through the universe, and I don’t know what’s going to happen. I just have learned over the years to just let things be and come and go as they are going to come and go.”